Sports of The Times

Hope Trickles Away From Thirsty Red Sox Fans

By HARVEY ARATON

Published: December 19, 2003

A PROFESSOR of law and longtime Red Sox loyalist ducked out of late-morning litigation in Maine yesterday to return a call and in the process get an update on the status of the mother of all baseball trades, which, for him, has been both compelling and chilling.

"It could be the final revenge to — dare I say? — Babe Ruth," the professor, Roger Abrams, said. "A-Rod sent to Boston by some other owner for financial reasons, and bringing the World Series."

Then again, who knows what mayhem might occur if Alex Rodriguez can overcome the burden of his megabucks and wind up getting the opportunity to irrigate Red Sox Nation after 85 years of championship drought?

"I'll tell you a quick story," said Abrams, whose résumé includes the Richardson professorship at the Northeastern University School of Law, several books including "Legal Bases: Baseball and the Law" and the former role of baseball salary arbitrator.

"I recently was promoting my book on the 1903 World Series at a library in South Boston," he said. "There was a group of about six guys, 80 or older, and every one of them said the same thing: `I am living just long enough for the Red Sox to win the World Series.' It scared me to think of what kind of increase in the death rate there may be."

By yesterday, the wait for the deal that would exchange A-Rod for Manny Ramirez, who have the two biggest salaries in baseball history, already felt eight decades old. And it shouldn't have shocked anyone that something generally perceived as good for the game stalled, perhaps died, when, as usual, the players' union outmuscled the commissioner's office.

It has been the talk of all serious baseball towns. Even George Steinbrenner weighed in with an 11th-hour appeal on behalf of his good friend, the nearly jilted Nomar Garciaparra. "If I had Nomar," the Boss was quoted as saying by The Associated Press, "I wouldn't trade him because of how much he meant to that team and that city." This from the sentimentalist who blew off Andy Pettitte between bites of a burger.

We understand the position Steinbrenner is coming from, late nights awake, fearing A-Rod, the reigning American League most valuable player, and the underrated Magglio Ordóñez replacing the remote personalities of Garciaparra and Ramirez in the Red Sox clubhouse.

A-Rod thought the deal was done after he signed off on an arrangement with the Red Sox for relief on the $179 million left on his contract. The union, in the person of Gene Orza, said, Hold on, we'll tell you what the benefits of escaping last place must be. A-Rod acquiesced, saying yesterday that he would agree only to a deal Orza accepted, because heaven help the major leaguer who puts a cleat across his union's line in the sand.

"If I were the union, I'd be concerned, because you've got your salary leader involved in some diminution to his deal, and that might create the belief that no deal is sacred," Abrams said.

But if the player is agreeing to the reduction in compensation in exchange for the right to depart from a team he is dissatisfied with, isn't that in the spirit of the original union movement? Isn't that what Curt Flood was fighting against the reserve clause for?

"This is not an industrialized union that negotiates everyone's salary," said Paul Finkelman, the Chapman professor at the University of Tulsa Law School, who has written numerous articles on baseball labor. "The fundamental goal of the players association should be to protect the rights of the players to negotiate contracts they want for themselves.

"I understand the union wanting to protect vulnerable players who might be coerced into giving something up. But in this case, there is no one being harmed. The union is undermining the ability of a player to negotiate."

The moral of this whole episode is that the tallest pile of money isn't necessarily a stairway to heaven. When he signed with Texas for $252 million three years ago, the news media reacted as if A-Rod had committed a crime, when all he did was take a chance that Tom Hicks, the Rangers' owner, knew what he was doing. Now A-Rod knows better, and he also knows what becoming a regular in the network's fall lineup could mean for his ancillary earning potential. In Boston, baseball's so-called best player might even mount a midcareer run at Derek Jeter for the title of America's sexiest shortstop.

"A-Rod's had some decent endorsement deals, but he's been playing in Texas on a loser," said Doug Shabelman, senior vice president of the marketing concern Burns Sports and Celebrities. "If he goes to the Red Sox and they continue in the direction they've been going, and with their war with the Yankees, it will have a big impact on him."

Last place in the steamy Southwest or a piping hot New England race? More years of compiling Hall of Fame numbers that lead to idle Octobers or the chance to prove yourself the M.V.P. in the most pressurized of cookers?

Commissioner Bud Selig discontinued talks between the Red Sox and A-Rod yesterday, and Boston's president, Larry Lucchino, called the deal dead. That could be, although Texas' general manager, John Hart, equivocated, and given the limb these teams and players have gone out on, more talks make sense. Will those South Boston octogenarians outlast the negotiations?

"The process is absolutely fascinating," the lawyer Abrams said, with the Sox fan in him adding, "I want it to happen, because next season would be unbelievable."

With or without A-Rod in Boston, it should be something to see. If he wants in, if he really seeks a stage worthy of the best, he cannot just stand aside and allow union bean counters to imprison him in Texas, to kill a deal everyone but Garciaparra and Steinbrenner wants to see done. He should fight this, and fast.